White Gold

Mining is a complicated business. It’s destructive, it’s dangerous. But in order to get the lithium we need to power the energy transition, mining could be a necessary evil.

In this episode, we go from protests in South America to a gold mine in Nevada, where we tak ...

To survive the climate crisis, we need to electrify everything: our cars, of course, but also our appliances, homes, mass transit, entire neighborhoods and cities. Everything. 

That’s no small task. So to better understand why electrifying everything matters, and ho ...

Are lithium-powered electric vehicles as ‘green’ as we think they are? With the advent of electric cars, manufacturers tell us we’re racing towards a clean-energy future. It’s lithium that powers these vehicles. Most of the world’s stocks of this lightest of metals are found in b ...  Show more

A village in northern Portugal is fighting to prevent what could be the first large scale battery grade lithium mine in Europe from going into operation on its doorstep. For Assignment, Caroline Bayley travels to Covas do Barroso - the remote farming community with World Agricult ...  Show more

The US has enormous deposits of critical minerals like lithium right here at home. So why are we looking at mining the ocean floor and asteroids? This episode was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team. It was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-che ...  Show more

Can we meet the soaring demand for lithium, a vital metal for electric cars and green energy? Mining is concentrated in a limited number of countries such as Australia and Chile. And with China dominating the manufacture of electric car batteries and already accounting for the im ...  Show more